The Struggle
by CrzA
Summary: The Struggle When the person you're in love with is so painfully oblivious you have to resort to extreme measures to make them notice. Or where Izuku gets desperate trying to get Shouto to realise his feelings for him run deeper than friendship.


Izuku might fight villains on pretty much a daily basis, some of which have gotten worryingly close to actually taking him down, but in his opinion, that's not the hardest thing he has to deal with in his life as a Pro Hero. After all, he signed up for this job, and even with its less than good aspects, he still loves it immensely. Sure, the pay isn't anything to marvel at because he just recently got upgraded from a simple sidekick, but he has someone to share the rent with who just so happens to be rich, so, all in all, things in his career are pretty great.

His love life however… Well, to put it simply, in Izuku's opinion there is only one thing worse than being hopelessly in love with his best friend who is also his rich housemate and partner at work. And that prize would have to go to being hopelessly in love with his best friend who is also his rich housemate and partner at work, and is also painfully oblivious. And Izuku hasn't had the pleasure of meeting anyone as obnoxiously dense as Todoroki Shouto.

Too bad he's also stupidly easy to fall for. With his stupid small smiles that make him feel like he has won the lottery whenever he sees one, and his stupid caring gestures and those stupid annoyingly beautiful eyes that always see right through him. How is Izuku supposed to not fall in love with someone who seems to know him better than he knows himself, who is constantly taking care of him when he forgets to take care of himself? He sends him texts to remind him to _drink water_. Who even does that?!

It's impossible not to love him. Absolutely, positively, without a single shadow of a doubt, impossible.

And, as it turns out, it's even more impossible to make him aware of it.

Izuku will be the first person to admit that he wasn't very obvious about it at first. Or, at least, he didn't go out of his way to make it obvious; hell, he may have even been trying to deny his feelings a little bit. He'd managed to do it fairly well all the way through high school with his countless other crushes, why not this one too, even if it was recurring? They even lived in the dorms together before, so sharing a house shouldn't make it any more difficult.

In his defence, it didn't, it was just the same as it had been back at U.A., but Izuku came to realise that this wasn't just some crush he could move on from. He even started wondering if it had been that in his teens. Regardless, Izuku knows for a fact that his feelings now go way beyond friendship and even further beyond a mindless crush. He suspects he may have skipped some steps and straight-up nosedived right into "I would die for you, please be my husband", which, really, is a little concerning.

Sadly, it's not exactly a surprise. Izuku may as well have legally changed his middle name to 'intense feelings' at this point.

Even so, he tried playing it (as) cool (as he could manage) in the beginning, mostly for his own sanity. Starting out as a proper Pro and working to fill in his mentor's enormous shoes—and, despite All Might's size, Izuku obviously doesn't mean that literally—, it was just easier to pretend he wasn't falling back into old feelings. He figured that if he ignored it long enough, it would all just fade away and he would easily lean into their shared life in that tiny apartment they rented together after Izuku finally had to move out of his childhood home to go to this new agency.

However, all those gestures Shouto made before only got more frequent when they started living together, which wasn't easy on Izuku's heart. To add to that, when their rooms were actually right in front of each other, somehow catching Shouto walking from the bathroom in nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist managed to throw him for a bigger loop than sharing a locker room with him. Did that make sense? Absolutely not. But did Izuku's heart-on care? Hah, as if.

Izuku went from denial straight to acceptance, and when that finally settled, he decided that life was just too short to keep his feelings to himself. The only logical move was to confess, obviously. But the problem with this is that, even if Izuku faces villains on pretty much a daily basis, he can't seem to gather the guts necessary to just tell his best friend he is very much in love with him. So, he settled for the next best thing: hinting at his feelings until Shouto noticed.

Cowardly move, he knows, but he isn't the only one to do it. Not even close. For some odd reason, Izuku found that if Shouto didn't like him back it would be easier to move on if he didn't take that extra step. And if he did then he was just bound to notice, right? Right?!

It quickly became obvious that subtlety just wouldn't do it with Shouto. Starting small was a grave mistake because all it really did was give Izuku an astonishing amount of heartache. Casual touches evolved to a heartfelt conversation that made Izuku realise the extent of the damage his friend's upbringing had really caused. Hugging and cuddling became a somewhat common occurrence between them because Izuku couldn't watch Shouto suffer in silence, touch-starved and lonely even when he was supporting him every day.

As lovely as that may sound, getting to touch the person he loves so intimately—it feels intimate to Izuku, anyway—, the intent of those gestures was purely platonic. It was emotional support, for both of them, but it didn't have romantic feelings attached, no matter how Izuku felt. That was mostly for Shouto's sake, and Izuku decided to approach his hints differently.

Surely, if he started to spend more and more time with Shouto, his friend would get the idea that he wanted something more to develop between them. Izuku didn't spend half as much time with anyone else, and they even lived together so that just made it even more prominent.

Izuku won two tickets to an All Might movie premiere? He invited Shouto to go with him even though Kacchan would probably kill to have access too—it wasn't really a secret that he was as much of a hardcore fan as Izuku. Ochako told him about a cat café that opened up downtown and had the cutest kittens to play with? Rather than go there with Hitoshi, who was a notorious cat person with fifteen adopted rescues, he invited Shouto instead. Another trip to the hospital? Izuku made Shouto his emergency contact. No, that's not a joke, and still, Shouto didn't even bat an eye.

"We live together," He'd said, "it makes sense to call me."

Of course it does, but that just seems unlikely, doesn't it? Emergency contacts are family, guardians, spouses… Shouto didn't seem to see the meaning behind it.

Seeing as that wasn't producing the desired effect, Izuku then started to up his game.

At first, he thought of dressing up to attract Shouto's attention. That one was a mistake for three reasons. First, Izuku is a verified fashion disaster. Second, because of the first reason, he decided to search the internet for 'outfits to impress the guy you like' and bleach wouldn't be enough to ever cleanse his mind of everything he saw. _Assless chaps? What the actual hell?_ No one in their right mind would actually _try_ to pull that off and Izuku doesn't even want to think back to all the other suggestions.

Finally, he figured pretty early on that Shouto didn't actually care about what he wore. His reaction to Izuku dressed to the nines for an agency event and literally stepping out of bed in an oversized t-shirt full of holes and old sweatpants with permanent stains was exactly the same. Whether that was meant to make Izuku feel good or offended, to this day, he still hasn't decided.

Since clothes weren't the right course of action, Izuku tried his hand at flirting a little. He's actually pretty good at it… when he isn't thinking about it. But considering he doesn't drink that much to get him to that level of impulsivity, he is usually a bumbling, blushing mess whenever he so much as thinks of flirting. That, in and of itself, should be hint enough.

But apparently, to Shouto, that was just the same as Izuku being friendly. Gathering the courage to actually let out the words "Your eyes are really beautiful, I could get lost in them forever" had taken him around a week without chickening out with a burning blush. And all that had gotten him was a quite genuine "thank you" and a casual "your eyes are pretty too" that nearly sent him into cardiac arrest but Shouto didn't even think twice about.

And the thing was that he didn't even know if he meant anything by it because Shouto is just like that. Seriously, Izuku has seen him nearly murder fans with similar lines, but that's beside the point.

After almost a year and a half like this, Izuku's patience started to grow impossibly thin and his shyness started to give way to a somewhat frustrated determination that ultimately resulted in all of his filters being forgotten in a dark and lonely corner of his mind. Subtlety be damned, it clearly wasn't doing him any favours before.

Izuku just really didn't know the extent of Shouto's obliviousness.

One really long day of fighting villains and both of them rightfully exhausted ended with Shouto bringing one half-asleep Izuku some painkillers to deal with his latest injuries in his room. The words "Hey, you're tired, why don't you spend the night here instead of going all the way to your bed" just slipped out of his mouth unbidden, but they were far too smooth and Izuku was far too spent to take them back.

"My room is just across the hall from yours." Shouto said simply, and Izuku may have blushed and taken about twenty steps back in the beginning but he was past the point of shame.

"Yeah, I know."

If that wasn't just spelling it out, Izuku doesn't actually know what is, but the fact of the matter was that Shouto just let out a huff of a laugh and told him he was funny before leaving with a quiet "goodnight". At the time, Izuku almost thought of giving up entirely, but somehow spite seemed to fuel him to get even more daring. And that was how he got to where he is right now, almost in tears as he wonders why the universe is this cruel to have him pining for the densest person on the planet.

"Yeah, I'm sorry, Deku-kun, you just might have to get naked in front of him so that he can finally get the hint." Ochako says with a wave of her hand and a small smirk on her lips, taking a sip of her orange juice.

Izuku stares at her, no humour to be found in the downturn of his mouth. "You don't understand, I _tried_ that." She chokes on her drink. "Yeah! You know what he did? He got a towel and warmed it up with his quirk then he handed it to me. Thought I forgot one before showering. I was completely dry, Ocha!"

Almost snorting the beverage out of her nose, Ochako has to cover her mouth to keep from startling the other patrons in the café with her guffaws. Izuku has been suffering through this for too long to laugh along with her. He just wants Shouto to notice, to put him out of his misery and reject him or make his dreams come true and tell him he feels the same. Maybe even kiss him. Izuku deserves a kiss after this whole ordeal.

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry. That's just… He's precious."

"I know. That's what makes this so much more tortuous, he's so oblivious it's cute and it makes me like him even more. Am I a masochist? I may be a masochist."

"So _that's_ why you broke all your bones in high school! It all makes sense now."

"It does, doesn't it?" Izuku sighs then lets his head fall to the table with a clank of the glasses atop it.

Ochako takes another sip of her drink, humming. "You two are going out on that mission out of the country together, right?"

"Your point?"

"Aren't you getting a room together?" Izuku narrows his eyes at her. "I've read enough fanfic to know where 'there's just one bed' leads."

"The room is booked already, we're leaving tomorrow. And even if it wasn't, I'm also not in charge of that and you know it."

She shrugs, pursing her lips. "I'm just saying."

She was just saying. _She was just saying._ And yet, what she said wouldn't leave him alone. Izuku just couldn't stop thinking of that trope, he couldn't stop thinking about what the undoubtedly unrealistic scenarios sharing a bed with Shouto during this mission could lead to. It was all his mind could offer the whole cab ride to the airport, the whole time waiting to board, the whole trip to their destination and the whole cab ride to the hotel.

When they finally get there, Izuku had been imagining it for so long he is equal parts surprised and disappointed when there is nothing wrong with the room's booking. Sure thing, there are two twin beds when they open the door and Izuku, jetlagged and woefully scorned by the lack of fanfic-type scenarios playing out to kickstart his love life into novel worthy proportions of cheesiness, has had enough.

Screw subtlety, screw flirting, screw indirect hints. If the trope won't come to him then he will make the damn trope.

Izuku steps around Shouto, borrowing some of his quirk's strength to push the two beds together as his friend stares, confused. He doesn't take his eyes off of Shouto as he climbs onto the newly created plus ultra-sized bed, making a show of posing like he's just asking to be drawn like one of those French girls. Then he inhales, blows out that breath and completely fails to keep the sarcasm out of his next words.

"Oh no… There's only one bed. What are we gonna do?"

Shouto blinks, and that is actually a hint of shock and a blush crawling up to his cheeks. _Success!_ Izuku will take anything at this point, that's how desperate he is.

"I sense…" Shouto starts slowly, closing the door to the room behind him before continuing. "You're sending some signals…"

Once again, sarcasm is something Izuku can't really contain. "What? No… You think?"

"And I feel like I may have missed a few…"

"Really? What _ever_ gave you that idea, Shouto-kun?"

"In my defence—" Shouto cuts himself off and clears his throat, his left cheek flaring slightly. "Naked in the living room. Wow, how did I miss that one?"

"I ask myself that question pretty much every day since it happened." Izuku huffs, sitting up on the bed.

"It's a bit forward, don't you think?" A chortle breaks out of Shouto and he covers his mouth, poorly masking it as a cough and Izuku is just a little outraged.

"Are you laughing at me? I tried 'less forward' approaches for a _really_ long time."

"No, no, I'm not laughing at you." Shouto assures him, waving his hands defensively before stepping closer, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth that sends Izuku's heart into overdrive. "Okay, maybe a little bit, but mostly at myself. Although, and take this as perhaps constructive criticism, you could have just told me."

"You say that as if it's so easy!" Izuku complains, throwing his arms up in defeat. " _And_ , to be completely honest with you, I'm not even sure _that_ would have done it."

"I think that's a fair assumption." His friend admits, finally letting the lopsided grin creep onto his lips as he sits down on the bed beside Izuku. "How long, exactly?"

"Care to take a guess?" Izuku challenges, lifting a defiant eyebrow at him.

"Three months?"

"Add to that another twenty-one and you'd be about right."

"Twenty-one… days?"

"Months, Shouto-kun. Two years."

Shouto joins his hands together, breathing in. "That's about as long as we've been living together. Well, this is awkward."

Stomach sinking at those last words, Izuku turns to face his friend fully, trying not to break down crying on impulse alone. That is the opposite of what he wants to hear, especially at the start of a mission outside the country during which they will have to share a room for an entire week. Izuku really didn't think this through, but that's exactly what impulse decisions get him, isn't it?

Much to his confusion, however, Shouto's lips are still quirking at the corners and there's a faint touch of pink on his cheeks that fades into his scar. Izuku swallows around the lump in his throat, butterflies fluttering in his gut and heart suddenly drumming hard against his ribcage. He braces himself when Shouto faces him too, unsure of what's to come and praying to all the gods that his suffering may finally end one way or another.

"I kept telling myself you only moved in with me because of rent. And that we were just close friends. You're my best friend after all. I could never imagine that you would…"

"W-why not?" Izuku finds himself asking, utterly at a loss for any reasons that would justify not wanting to be more than that to Shouto.

Shouto waves his hand in a vague gesture. "I don't know, I just didn't think it was possible, it didn't even occur to me. You're too good for me?"

Izuku can't help the snort as soon as he hears that reasoning. "In what universe? Shouto-kun, I'm sorry, but you really _are_ the densest person in the world."

"That's also a fair assumption." That little smile is bound to send Izuku to his grave. Goodness, he wants to kiss him. He deserves a kiss, damn it.

"So… what does any of that mean? You're killing me here, I'm dying."

His eyes flick down to Izuku's lips for a split second and it's enough make him melt a little. Shouto takes one of Izuku's hands in his, pointing to the joined beds with his head.

"As flattering as the offer is," He whispers, shrugging his shoulders with a small smirk. "At least buy me dinner first."

Izuku's heart skips a beat and he can't take it anymore, he grabs Shouto's face and looks him in the eye, leaning forward until they are but a hairsbreadth from each other. "Can I kiss you?"

Without a single word, Shouto closes the gap between them, testing the waters with a few chaste pecks that steal Izuku's breath away entirely. They're short, tentative, somewhat playful, and it feels like a million sparks are coming alive inside Izuku as he returns them in kind, one after another until they finally find a rhythm and start moving their lips in unison. Shouto's tongue licks a stripe over Izuku's bottom lip and he parts his mouth with a trembling gasp, inviting him in whenever he feels ready.

How many times Izuku has imagined this moment, how many times he has painted a picture in vibrant colours that explode all around him in pure ecstasy. He imagined that Shouto might taste sweet, but there is a faint hint of salt and it's only then that Izuku realises he has started crying. Thumbs wipe the tears away gently as those hands pull him closer and their kiss deepens even further, their tongues caressing each other in languid strokes as they take their time to learn each other's taste, the feel of their breaths mingling between them as their lungs begin to burn.

It's wonderful, it's perfect, it's worth every second of pure agonising torture that led to this very moment.

When they break apart, it's an infinity too soon, but they pant for air, chests heaving with the effort it takes to not just melt back into each other. Then Shouto chuckles, kissing the bridge of Izuku's nose.

"You should have started with that."

A small, irritated noise breaks out of Izuku and he shoves Shouto onto his side, jumping to his feet and rolling his suitcase to the bathroom to get changed into his pyjamas. He got that kiss, now he deserves some freaking rest because dealing with _that_ is absolutely exhausting. Still, the goofy grin plastered on his face when Izuku looks himself in the mirror is enough to let anyone know he enjoys every single second. Maybe he _is_ a bit of a masochist.


End file.
